Don't Fall Behind
World Class Asset Management for Smarter Public Works
Learn more from Luke Anderson about the next steps in your asset management journey for Smarter Public Works.
Good morning and welcome to Don't Fall Behind World Class Asset Management for Smarter Public Works Webinar. I'm glad you've joined us for this great discussion today. I have just a few housekeeping items first. All lines will be muted during today's discussion, so please submit your questions through the Q&A feature at the bottom of your screen at any time during the session.
The presenters will answer your questions live at the end. Today's session will be recorded and you will receive an email with a link to the recording. So let's go ahead and oh, there is one more thing. We have some related assets, some resources that you can access again down at the bottom of your screen. You'll see a widget that just says related resources, I believe.
So you've got some good information in there, so feel free to take those those links and assets as well. So let's go ahead and get started. Luca Andersen, strategic Consultant. So it's strategic solutions consultant here at Brightly will be our moderator today. Luke comes from a background in energy automation and that controls and has done with brightly software about ten years after receiving his EP MP in 2017.
Luke is focused on both sides of the asset management world. Day to day operations and long term strategic capital plan. Luke's current role as strategic consultant allows him to consult with civic leaders, helping to establish clear and justified capital plans. Welcome, Luke. The floor is yours. Awesome. Thank you, Tracy. Thank you, everybody, for joining. Most importantly. Thank you, Mary.
Mary is going to provide us some absolutely killer insight today. I've had the pleasure of doing some run through with this. And every time we talk about the topics today, I'm taking more and different notes. I'm very excited. So focusing on asset management, really in the world that we live in today with natural disasters, with our economic downturn, with our workforce turnover, with everything we're dealing with.
Great strategy, some great topics. So I'm going to start by Maria may give you a little introduction. Some of the read your little bio here. Mary brings significant experience managing federally funded grant programs across the United States, as well as North Carolina, most recently here in state government, managing 20 million and community development block grants, infrastructure and 1.7 billion in FEMA public assistance grants.
She oversaw some COVID relief funds, as well as dual roles in both state and infrastructure Program Manager for the NC Office of Recovery and Resiliency, as well as the state operations lead for the North Shore and Division of Energy and Emergency Management. So more experience than I could even pronounce in one paragraph. So very excited to have you here.
Can we start, Mary I want to start pretty broad. I want you on your mind. Give us kind of a just an overview of some of the challenges. Maybe give an overview of what this idea of asset management is and what kind of jump into to kind of what we want to talk about to that. Sure. And thanks for the opportunity.
I really enjoyed this topic. It's certainly very timely where we're headfirst into Hurricane season and having grown up in Memphis, Tennessee, which is on a fault line, the new map evolved and spent a lot of time in Oklahoma and other states. We know that with this hurricane season, straight line winds and flooding and rainfall, which is only increasing over time, but wherever you are in the United States, any disaster declaration starts out by states and counties and all of the municipalities, public works authorities and other eligible applicants.
The damage assessments, the damages to your facilities, to your infrastructure, down to pipes that are underground or some local governments have a variety of assets and abilities. And I'm talking about a plethora. But public works, as we know, is really the heart. That's how I look at it, at least the heart of a community. Because when public works facilities, public utilities reach the community in a way that works and is basically created or rehabilitated or rebuilt for true longevity, that we know that that's the number one factor that helps the community have trust in the stability and potential for economic growth.
So it really does lean a lot on public works. So we're going to talk about really three things disaster recovery funds, how your impacts, damage impacts for your facilities really make a difference for supplemental appropriations that go beyond FEMA public assistance, which is, of course, the infrastructure funding and how there are opportunities in advance to understand what your priorities are, whether it is critical infrastructure as the public works or, you know, buildings, roads.
I mean, there's lots of different concepts of critical infrastructure, but whatever is locally owned and maintained with the right kind of insurance, oftentimes National Flood Insurance Program, the FEMA program, that's so various insurance companies insofar as your community is a participant. Insurance, we know, is very important as well. And asset inventories can capture all of this. But it is the strategic asset management plans that define for federal agencies that have this disaster funding what it is that's needed sometimes down to the zip code.
And we'll get into that a little bit. So we're going to talk about those things today. Perfect. Yeah. And actually, I think that's that's a good place to start right there. I'm going to I want to do the poll in just a minute and ask you this first. You mentioned two things I think I hear about all the time, the asset inventory.
Right. Knowing what we own, but also knowing data about what we own. Right. I've got these things and it's got these attributes. It's this old that's used this way. But then you also talked about the actual strategic asset management plan. Can you can you talk just a little bit of the dress on on on a little bit of the difference?
I know we're going to talk more about kind of what that what that means kind of comparing it to. I can we're going to talk about Mary's map, which was a very sad study. What it is that I have schema the ability to better understand where your facilities are located under grounded facilities. Not so easy, but we'll get to that in just a minute because I wasn't much of a a data person.
I'm not trained in parsing data or coding or particular types of data analysis, but what I know is that data proves cost benefits and now I am a sort of hybrid grant, regular federal regulations policy. But particularly local government data nerd when it comes to how to prove these things because you have them in an asset plan. It's based upon the inventories.
You've already modeled, for example, aging lifespans. And you can prioritize based upon your inventories generally, what's a priority to you? Because we are used to as local governments, folks are used to making these decisions, All right, this is going to cost X. We don't have the financing for that. So what grants are we going to go for? And that's one of the things that that we do in our work.
And I suppose the most important thing is understanding that an asset management plan proves repair versus replace and it does it more quickly And based upon facts from weather modeling in addition to the modeling that's already done from an aging perspective, an aging infrastructure perspective, no matter what, most people start with critical infrastructure. When financial decisions have to be made and inventories get you to a point.
But it's the strategic, more comprehensive plan that allows for certain types of modeling to be done. If you're in an earthquake area, earthquakes or two scenarios. Flooding is a problem everywhere now, and there are flood maps that are funded by state agencies and you know what just got well, last year it was announced that Noah received $500 million internally.
This is not going to be a competitive grant to really expand coastal and inland flooding models, which can then be used by local governments, counties, public works, utility authorities to take their own systems and use those models. So it's a really good opportunity because using real data has only been something that has been on underway for larger local governments and state and federal and state agencies over the past ten years.
So now is the time to to think about that, especially with funding availability, to do these kinds of consequence. Perfect. All right. Well, let's push this first pull out here that should have a period for everybody. So we've got a few options on there. One, you know, we can kind of define what an asset management plan is. Click here if you've already got one in place, click be.
If you if you feel like you've got a good idea of what you own and at least a good idea of when you want to replace it, just kind of a schedule. It's not very strategic, it's not integrating too much, but it's more than just having a list. And that's what C is, is just having a list, right?
Maybe we have a list of our buildings that we have a list of parts and maybe some major assets that we own, but we don't have anything beyond that. And then D hoping nobody's going to click the button. Fortunately, there may be a few ideas is we don't have anything at all. We don't have any any infrastructure or assets in place or processes in place.
I'll give it a little bit a minute. I wasn't saying there's a lot of local governments that don't you know, they have to really high. Yeah, know, and one thing I'm going to put out there where folks are answering the question is, you know, I think we all know local governments, state agencies, federal agencies are taxed and it's just difficult to get on top of asset inventories.
But the nice thing is, again, we have funding available for that for local governments. DO Yeah, right. Mara We got about half the people here, so we'll we'll push it out here. Keep moving. Okay, great. So about a third at the level of the plan and about a third have the list and then about a shared between the the nothing and some sort of end of life replacement.
So the next. Yep. Good. Now we will have another another pool coming up kind of about you know so if you guys want to start thinking about it kind of kind of why why do you feel like you're in that stage of your of your journey? But I do want to I will keep keep going a little bit more if Mary, I'm excited to hear about this next next topic before we ask that.
But I want to talk specifically when we think about hurricane season and not just hurricane season. It's it's Eldoret direction season right now, isn't it? I mean, we're we're they're getting hit. It's all over the news. The entire Southeast. It hasn't made it to my area, North Carolina, too much. We're getting some rain, but places are getting pounded.
There is softball sized hail in Texas. So talk a little bit with this. With this season of weather upon us, how does asset management specifically impact the local government resiliency, recovery funding? How does it help them put them in a good place to get some of that? Okay. And and again, I love this topic and I really, really appreciate us doing this.
So from local governments, as I've mentioned, all facility damage discount essentially at the end of the day, strategic asset management plans tell a nonstarter. Can I jump in real quick? We say all facility damages count. I'm I'm I grew up in fact facts when I hear that I think about buildings but you're talking about road with playground equipment fence I mean anything owned by the government.
What does that mean? Facility damage. Yeah, please. I'm going to use the tornado as an example because we can all get a mental image of a tornado. We've seen them. Is that anything that is damaged, that is owned by a local government or public utility authority underground, above ground. And a lot of times the underground lines don't show damage for a few days.
But seeing that gives you some time to collect those damage yourself. The onus is on the local government. Initially, they're called initial damage assessments before what's called a joint state SEMA damage assessment to come in and do some verifications the local governments work with they're typically county or if they're a sovereign tribal nation or territory, the emergency managers that they know within their region or their area to roll up those damage costs.
And that could be they're called FEMA public assistance categories of work, and they are debris operations and emergency protective measures. And sometimes that's enough, like in the state of North Carolina, the threshold now is right about $80 million for the governor to ask the president to have FEMA come to town and write grants, directed grants to local governments for roads, bridges, dams, levees if they own them and maintain them, which, you know, we have the high hazard dam program.
But I'll digress on that one from FEMA. We have Parks, locally owned parks, locally on the roads. Some states have county roads. In North Carolina, we don't have county on roads, either state or local, and it expands into public buildings, volunteer fire departments, fire and police stations, town halls, historic buildings that are in use at the I'm of the disaster landfall, whatever event it is, the recent, let's say, human adversarial events that occur.
Now, it wasn't enough to get a disaster declaration, but some people went and shot up an electric substation in one of our counties. And I don't know, hopefully that's not going to happen more and more. But hope is not a plan when it comes to that kind of thing. So disaster facilities for damage assessments, public works is always the correct one, but that doesn't mean that flooded buildings or buildings that have come down from a tornado, schools, counties, schools, local schools, including those that are private, are eligible for form of public assistance.
And all of those collective damages count, and all of those should be assessed as soon as possible. But again, local governments can can run it kind of thing. So having the the inventory and knowing values for repair for 20 or 30 more years or find the funding to replace sometimes FEMA shows up and they have what's called 406 mitigation funding, which is immediate funding that if eligible cost reasonable and is shown to be going to take care of business for the long term, Go ahead.
Seem a little right that mitigation into your project and allocate those those costs. Now again you've got to have requisite insurance in place if applicable and you've got to have maintenance records. So hopefully that helps a little bit about what is the facility perfect? Yeah, absolutely. So and then I didn't mean to digress, insult, apologize, but from the from the from the recovery side standpoint, having that plan and going through that, how do those two how does having that plan obviously gives us a baseline of what what what condition it was in, how it how to value it.
Talk a little about kind of how the asset manager planning ties with that. Yeah, right. Right. So local governments are working hard and for example, the EPA provides money to states to do asset inventories. That's great. The Department of Transportation and EPA have are two federal agencies that have both shown that to have an asset management plan in place proves in advance of a disaster for right now in disaster season, any time that you decide you're going to put an asset inventory together, you can take it further.
Like those like the Federal Highway Administration did and the EPA has done to show the cost benefit. That same is going to come to town and assess for any permanent work or I call physical facilities, anything that's plausible on a map. They're going to look at all of the permanent work damages and say, okay, so and I'm going to I have a client that I love working with, but there's a lot of aerial lines with public works facilities around the United States.
And if there's straight line winds and trees come down on those aerial lines, then what do we do? So FEMA is FEMA public assistance takes what was damaged and are mandated to take it back insofar as it's insured. And I won't keep repeating that. But maintained and insured as if it should be is it's required to have insurance.
They're supposed to take it back to the way it was the day before the disaster happened. But the forensics mitigation adder provided by FEMA, I call it adder funding. It can underground those lines. Why? Because FEMA doesn't want to keep coming back over and over and over knowing that we've got increased amounts of rain, rainfall, longer disaster or weather events and stronger weather events.
So FEMA knows and subsequent annual competitive funds are intended for resiliency. And so they will underground those lines can't go beyond a certain number related to the initial damage assessment. And then you get more in depth after the famous day joint assessments that are done for your state or tribal nation or territory. But those four or six mitigation adder funds can really add up.
And next thing you know, you're undergrounding the lines and you have to worry about them again outside of the maintenance, trust me. So from a from a again, thinking I'm going to kind of compare the asset inventory to the to the Strategic Asset Management plan. If I have an inventory and let's say something simple like a roof, right?
A roof gets destroyed during the tornado. If I can show if we show FEMA that that roof was 25 years old, they're FEMA's without any other data that he was going to say, well, Roof is supposed to last about 30 years or 25 years. So they're going to give us some sort of value of that age of that roof.
They're going to they're going to say they're going to look for the cost to repair it. Right. And also right. That's right. Based on the data for now, I have a plan in place. That plan includes operations that cause maintenance, includes data, and it can show that actually we put a new rubber coating. We actually refurbished that roof last year, even though it's 25 years old, it was actually in very good condition.
Does that does that change what happens with FEMA and how they look at the value of that roof, whatever is in place the day before the disaster is what SEMA is going to repair, provided that it's got everything maintained, etc.. But that's what FEMA repairs. And so, for example, let's say you've got the great roofs, but the windows you're on on a coast or you're in the mountains and winds are a problem, does it make sense from a cost benefit analysis on the coast, for example, for FEMA to fund hurricane shutters for your business?
That happens. Do you get the really fancy, extremely nice, expensive hurricane shutters? No. But you do get the ones that meet certain codes and standards. And that's happened all along both coasts and in the mountains of Colorado or, you know, the Rockies and out here, the Smokies, inside. That's part of resiliency. I would imagine that is part of long term resiliency.
And then to that, yeah, and then there's those, and those are funds that are law, right? So we have the Stafford Act. What for everybody with that. But the Stafford Act is what allows them all to come to town. If we have exceeded again in North Carolina the statewide damage assessment threshold of $18 million. For the record, that damage assessment threshold is your 2020 census times a dollar 77.
So North Carolina's about 18 million. And then each county has to hit their threshold. I've had conversations with a variety of different people in various areas of the United States and sometimes we don't get our damages collected, and that's where those asset plans come in place for more quicker initial damage inspection as well. Damage assessments as well for costs, which makes it a lot easier to roll up the chain as every state territory and tribal nation has in place from an emergency management perspective.
So those asset plans know in advance conditions, maintenance records, etc.. But it is the asset plans that have prioritized the projects that they should go to first, that should be assessed first, where the projects should be written first. And it may be that you already have the mitigation in mind. FEMA has to agree Is it cost reasonable? Is it necessary and will it provide long term benefits?
So that's that's that extra mile that an asset plan does. Interesting. So and again, I think there's there's a lot more to the benefits of having an asset management plan, a strategic asset measure plan. But there's probably one we can kind of hang your hat on that. If there is an instance of a FEMA interaction being needed to be done, having an asset management plan is going.
It's going to pay for itself with the potential of the money you can get because you're not. Everything you just mentioned isn't happening. If FEMA walks in and there's no data. Right. You're saying that you're not. It makes it a lengthy process. People are. So they've cut and shoved debris to the side of the road. And, you know, within a certain amount of time, it's expected, say, 30 days that you have damages, capture your initial local damage assessments done.
But how many local governments have the staff to do that? How many vertical governments know how to assess cubic yards of vegetated degree debris, for example, and where to take it? Is it properly permitted? So from a damage assessment perspective, to keep it simple is the best thing. You know, and you do that by referencing your list, which gets us to Mary's map at some point.
Again, very sad. Yeah, yeah, yeah, very sad. You know and in advance of or you know, outside of thinking about disaster recovery, storms, manmade, etc., you know, we have the D-plus rating for our infrastructure and around the nation territories. And the goal was before COVID and still is to get that to perhaps be it's that's a that's a long game.
And I think that the mindsets that local governments or at least it's been my experience and the experience of a lot of colleagues that local governments are starting to understand. Patchwork doesn't work. It doesn't create confidence with communities. And there are ways to define at least a plan. It may be a 30 year plan or a 50 year plan.
A lot of plans that are in place presently that I've reviewed for cities around the United States and some of the Canadian provinces. So 100 years. But you have a plan in place as opposed to, well, what do we need to do in three months or, oh, my gosh, we just had a tornado and I'm not really sure what can be done.
So the onus is then on SEMA to make all of those decisions for you, which that's what they do. And SEMA people have been very helpful to a lot of us who now have this career in disaster recovery and grants. That being said, there is shift knowing how tax agencies are federal, state and local government. There is a shift to taking more ownership of your assets, understanding more about what you have, what you need, what you can finance, and what you're going to need funding for.
Whether it's a grant or a low interest long term loan, like an asset. So you've mentioned Mary's map a few times. Can we can we dig into it? Can we can we hear that here? The story could tell us about it, which we sure can. So back before Hurricane Matthew and I think October of 2016, it gets a little foggy.
For the record, we've had nine federal disaster declarations since Matthew, not including covers in North Carolina. And usually we walk around our days and we don't think about disaster, you know, multiple overlapping, repetitive disasters. Then all of a sudden, an infectious disease that shows up. So it's it's a lot. But there are people that are minding the store when it comes to these overlapping disasters.
Local governments for a very long time didn't have an idea about what their inventories were. And when I say inventories, I mean everything from actually like the public works shed that's way out in the lower 40 or, for example, extremely expensive emergency rescue equipment, low flow parks that were out on loan to another local government that wasn't tracked.
And so a disaster hits and all of a sudden it's extremely stressful and you don't know where your stuff is, for lack of a better term. That's just the simplest way I can put it. So early 2016, I believe FEMA trained states on their software called FEMA Grants portal and CMA Grants Portal is a online tool portal for every local government, and I'm sure the majority of people on this call understand what it is.
But back then, FEMA Grants Portal was training states, and I went out with a colleague all over North Carolina. Lots of showed up to these trainings because finally we were going to go from written project worksheets to online fully transparent. Here's what FEMA thinks you should get. Yes or no to the four or six mitigation ad or here's your insurance and you local governments go in and regularly update their insurance records and all of the other items, maintenance records, etc..
You can do that any time, day or night. 24 seven 365. But before we had seen the grants for when I would go to local governments with a colleague, there were folks that didn't have that list of of facility assets. And same applies for a lot of things like SEMA will pay if records are destroyed and if there's anything double digitized records, paper records that are kept in boxes.
So of course, there's been that shift about data being available online in a way that provides the quicker facts that justify repair to your infrastructure After a disaster marries Map. Was local governments going to MapQuest or Google and printing off the their jurisdictional? I still got a screenshot in quadrants of their jurisdiction and sometimes it was 16 screenshots to make up their larger jurisdiction and putting Xs where there was critical infrastructure and OHS where there was less critical infrastructure according to the roads and to help FEMA get there and for future damage assessments.
If people that you don't know show up to help you to come up with the damages for your actual permanent work or your your physical facilities. So that was Mary's map. And it was helpful to jog memories before Matthew, because when Matthew made landfall, there were local governments that said they pulled out that map and were able to sit down and say, okay, here's our critical facilities.
And then projects were written more expediently. But the data that is collected now, based upon asset inventories and strategic plans, insofar as they modeled storm events, you've already got far more information than simply the location of your your infrastructure. Right. So the inventories have age records, but the asset plans with modeling, population modeling, weather modeling, various types of weather modeling that's already available to us.
You can see what's your financial position is. You will know quite rather quickly what it is that FEMA is going to fund. And then we talk about the supplemental appropria ation that also has to be proven. And in my mind it is the local governments, the regional public authority, utility authority, that helps set the standard and provides clarity relating to who deserves those supplemental appropriations state funding.
If a state has disaster recovery reserve funding, technically that's supposed to come in pretty quickly and assist with housing and certain types of critical infrastructure. But essentially there's funds that are supposed to back climate clean up after families, including the HUD, CDBG DDR program. Depending upon the congressional appropriation, it takes Congress some time, a long time. Imagine if Congress got that data, states and Congress got the data more quickly.
It may take less time to understand infrastructure needs, and because they have to be the most impacted and distressed communities that are getting that third tranche of disaster recovery funding essentially to back clean up for what's in the doesn't take care of. Well, there was a question that came in. I was going to say that, but it's pretty well related to what you just mentioned about the inventory.
The city reports, buildings, parks and vehicles with the NC League of Municipalities for the liability insurance. So the items are listed. Do you suggest a more do a more in-house type of inventory or kind of strategic asset management plan there? Trying to account for everything, but it's taking a long time. So I'll use an example of the Federal Highway Administration.
The Federal Highway Administration and the EPA have both implemented inventories using modeling, flood modeling, depending upon what's most prevalent in your area or most likely in your area. Knowing that it's going we're watching the trends increase on severity, length of storms and tertiary benefits or tertiary impacts, rather. They see quite clearly that what they have insurance for require to have insurance for and what they're modeling and what they're capturing is best held at the local level in so far as that state has jurisdiction of those highways.
So in my opinion, with the League of Municipalities and the insurance, it's always a good idea to make sure that what you can can do, which you can afford to do because there are local governments that can't afford to pay insurance. But if you are in the fortunate position where you are able to assess own insurance needs based on the regulations for disaster recovery side with the NFP requirement is in a flooding flood, the certain that flood insurance is required.
I would advise that you at least review your local independent insurance needs outside of. I think what we're saying is, is that the municipalities provides insurance coverage. If the person who has the question wants to clarify that and that's great as long as the insurance coverage meets the regulatory standards, then great. But if you have a need for additional insurance on additional facilities that the league may not may not manage, I would consider exploring that.
And always glad to have that discussion at another webinar because there's a that's there's a interesting topic about flood insurance and asset management as well. And I know one thing, I think one of the things I think is important is, is, you know, buildings, parks, vehicles, especially buildings, identifying if there are a critical pieces of those buildings. So we may have city hall, it might be worth it to break out and know what the age and condition maybe the roof is.
Maybe maybe the boiler in the chiller, things that that, you know, like Mary keep talking about criticality. You know, if we wake up Monday morning and it's broken, if that's a big deal, we probably want to keep an eye on it. And you know something that people don't think about is parking lots. So the town hall, we've got the the courthouse or, you know, the school well, the parking lot, you know, oftentimes parking lots will sit there for a long time and parking lots can get badly damaged.
And when parking lots get damaged or, underground infrastructure pipes become inundated with silt and burst, come apart at the scenes, as it were, parking lot. So then you get start getting continual sinkholes. That's the kind of thing where may not show up for a while. But when you're doing your damage assessments, always think about what's underneath the parking lots.
So not critical, but can be really dangerous. Well, and expensive. You if you if you let them go without taking the cheap patching and overlaying, then all of a sudden you're reconstructing a parking lot. And where are you gonna put all those cars. Exactly. And Sema also wants to see us use nature based solutions, so we stop pouring concrete everywhere for continued water runoff downhill.
But when you do your asset inventories, think about those things. Some people may think furniture needs furniture. They remember places, furniture. I mean, they're not going to mitigate your, you know, uncomfortable chair to a La-Z-Boy. But, you know, according to what is necessary for your parking lot or anything else, they'll pay to replace it. And if cost effective and eligible, that parking lot also gets the consideration for real resiliency over the long haul.
Absolutely. So I'd like to I'd like to actually show an example, Mary, of of a model that was done. It doesn't include weather, but I think it's a good example where weather could actually be included and I think it'd be a need to show the show the group and then have you kind of talk about what it would what it would mean to include something like flooding and flood mapping in this example, because it's a it's a it's a city that's right on the water.
So I think would be a good example. Right. So it won't it won't be very long. Let's see if this will start up here. So the weather modeling is something that I think is extremely interesting and again, not always affordable, but, you know, so this is a city on the on the on a lake. And essentially the main road here that you see up here, it's all in fairly acceptable condition.
Now. But what we're going to be what we're going to be doing now is we're modeling the life cycle of this. This is a stormwater infrastructure and this is where it really where I want to focus is right on the on the on the connection there with the with the water because it doesn't it doesn't take very long for those assets not other assets but specifically along that ridge to start to deteriorate and essentially reach a point where, you know, we're we're 15, 17 years from now, 16 years from now, we're so far behind in deferred maintenance and backlog of projects there.
I mean, this is where I think a weather model would come in because my my guess is that with the rise in this lake or any kind of change in weather pattern, these assets may not even last 60 years. Right. And essentially, this model is currently based on a very low budget. And that's that's one of the technologies that go ahead.
And I'd like to say I appreciate the simplicity of this model showing, this because I've seen some with universities that have done this or with large cities that have done this kind of modeling for all kinds of weather events that are so complicated to look at. You know, it's it's not always the easiest thing to translate. So what you what you're showing here is exactly what is the annual ization of this.
So you're starting with a little bit ARIN and then we're rolling into a whole lot of red. And what is the annual design for this? Is it a ten year thing or how this means I can pull it up here. I'll zoom in a little bit, but I can't move down now. It's a little hard to see it over a 40 year period.
And this gives you a breakdown here of how many are setting up within that level. So you can see where that red is starting to really show up about year 15. Right. And I see that you've got rehabilitate and repair. Of course, if. Yeah. And I mean, you know, the replacement option is always something that local governments everywhere are thinking about because of the aged infrastructure that D plus we've got.
Right. Well, and this is also this is the approach. This is the approach when we keep our current budget, which is severely underfunded. Right. Which is the other big problem. And the other big thing with the management plan is an asset management plan is, is how do we identify, you know, hey, what, what is the actual budget? How much should we be spending?
And look at the difference if we increase it to 625, look how much more capacity work we're doing in that first 1015 years. Right. And you can also we can overlap various types of disasters in this modeling. There is there are grant funds available to do the asset inventories. EPA requires that Doherty has certain requirements for or asset inventories being taken.
But there's a lot of other infrastructure that doesn't have an obvious funding source for asset inventory. And that's where we talk about those competitive annual grants that are made available. You know, there's capacity and capability or planning grants that don't require cost benefit analysis. It's a lot of people are aware of in grant applications, which can be very daunting for local governments.
But they're, you know, one of the things I enjoy doing is writing those grant applications, construction grant applications almost always require a benefit cost analysis. FEMA is rethinking that because we know that there's a lot of local governments that can't hire somebody to do a cost benefit analysis. But the the capability or capacity building portion of a can fund an asset inventory for your local infrastructure.
And SEMA wants us to better understand what we need to do so they don't keep showing up over, over and over for the same kind of atmospheric events, correct? That's right. Well, good. Well, very quick shout out to Mr. Rod. Lovely. If you ever get a chance to work with him. He's brilliant. He is. He made these models so good.
So let me pull this back. So let's I did have a couple to kind of funnel questions a little bit more in wrapping, but I know there's a lot you've picked up your your your experience at the federal local level. So, you know, I never like the you know, what type do you like. So I always like to frame it this way, knowing what you know.
Now, if you could go back to the very beginning and give a piece of advice to somebody that's at the very start with all that knowledge, what would that piece of advice be? So I'm going to say that, you know, I wasn't thinking about data at the very beginning. That's been a trend since I really started. You know, getting much more involved in this industry, if you will.
If disaster recovery can be considered an industry. One of the things that I would would most advise is I'm going to go back to those damage assessments. I'm going to go back to that strategic plan, you know, where your infrastructure is, whether it's X's and O's on a printed off quadrant map for your jurisdiction. Translate that into an asset inventory.
On top of that damage assessments, we refer to that asset inventory or those damage assessments. Do your prioritization because like I said earlier, the decisions that are made federally for supplemental recovery funds are in North Carolina. 50 counties were included in MAP and the same counties were impacted for Florence. Two years later, other local governments in states around the United States and territories in the sovereign tribal nations are experiencing different kinds of overlapping infrastructure, damaging weather events.
So the big thing for me is locally down to the zip codes coming together and providing those local damage assessments up the chain to your emergency managers. Knowing your emergency managers is very important. You've got some days to do it, but some damage is underground. Don't show up for a few days and you'll be prepared when FEMA and the state who are managing the state often show up to do the joint damage assessments and justify or validate what you've done, provided you can get to it.
Right. And that's sometimes a stretch for local staff. But most importantly, those damage assessments inform other agencies. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, EPA, USDA, the Department of Commerce, the Economic Development Administration. What Supplemental disaster recovery funding is needed? How much is needed and where it's needed. And yes, the state and feds make a lot of those decisions for us.
But strategic asset plans that involve future conditions, including weather modeling and population growth, for example, or loss, help us help us help the agencies that make the decisions understand are we the most distressed? Are we you know, have we been devastated, incredibly impacted, Because I believe that it's those damage assessments that really inform early on what's needed and where.
And so that's that's the advice. So I'm going to open it up to Q&A. We had a few questions come in, so if any other questions do come in, I'll I'll kind of ask them as they type up. But relating to kind of what you just said, who who, who pays for that? Who funds asset management plans and funds these these the processes of building these things.
Okay. So a little bit of everything. Right, right, right. And there are so we have EPA grants. I've mentioned EPA grants, and of course, that's for your water and sewer and wastewater infrastructure. Those are at those that takes you to asset inventories. There are specific some states have asset management plan directed appropriations for their local governments, not everybody, but it's headed in that direction.
The theme of BRICS funding and you'll want to talk to your hazard mitigation grant. Grant state contact, paired GIS modeling if it can be justified and you I mean same the ones going in and recommending that we have these scenarios available for these plants. So we can plan right now or very soon knowing it's going to take a long time to get there.
You have economic development grants idea when you're thinking about economic development, whether it's planning or what you need to do related to population growth or loss, industrial growth or loss businesses, etc.. So what I'll do is provide a listing of grants because I do have that list. And one other is for those that have attended. I'll just get the emails and I will send out a listing of grant funded opportunities to grant funding opportunities.
You can also take those damages that you come up with and combine them into documentation data that tell that nonfiction story for your states to consider. What is it you need to do? So you'd better understand, okay, here's our aging infrastructure, here's how much we're spending on upkeep and maintenance, and we're going to be doing patchwork for the next 20 years to get from a D plus to a B.
We need X first to start with the asset inventory, the Strategic Asset management plan, and then the project prioritization. And oftentimes federal grants require community buy and there are grants available to engage communities. So you're not doing things in a way that makes your citizens wary of decision making. I've seen those community meetings really, really garner trust, and it's a total shift from meetings that kind of become contentious, particularly around public works.
So there's a lot of grant availability. And then final question, then we'll have our final pool here at the very end. But final question in it, I'll kind of summarize it here. How do we can convey this to leadership councils, boards, people that control the purse strings? How do we convey this message? Because it doesn't it doesn't always seem to land right to the people at the top.
So when we just mentioned community, you're your citizen buying in. So a lot of times public works is a mystery. Some of these public works as an example. To me, public works is a mystery. How does a lot of this work? I mean, I understand that there are valves and pump stations and things that move water to my house and collect wastewater and move it out of my house.
But we've done a lot of things because we've had no money or very little money historically. I remember $100,000 in a grant was a big deal, you know, ten years ago. And now we've had hundreds of billions of dollars in money from COVID. And in fact, before the D-plus to the B. Right. Dropped on states and local governments to use for a variety of different ways.
Community engagement is a really critical factor that gets you to trust. When your communities trust you, then you have buy in and when your councils and commissioners receive the phone calls instead of Why is my utility bill going up? Because remember, there's local governments operating with tax revenues that are kind of based on the 1980s and not what we need today to get the work done.
So to convince councils, commissioners, representatives that asset inventory and asset management plans in particular save in the long term, make sure you got the community engagement outside of the most basic things that may go out in the mail. Make sure you have public meetings, invite those folks and have the conversation. I'm always glad to provide what helps make that conversation easier and more influential, but it's a matter of all encompassing community engagement with the councils and commissioners on board at a certain point in time, provided they're interested.
Hopefully they are, and that is what allows local government leaders to make decisions about. All right, do we reflect, do we patch that over there? We replace this culvert right now, Do we do X project that we know we need to do, but we don't, you know, and say, all right, so now we're it's worth it to do a strategic asset management plan based based on our inventory.
It takes time, but it also takes trust. Well, good. Well, thank you. I will push this last pull out to the to the audience. If anybody does want any any more information or need specific help, please, please click there. Otherwise, Mary, thank you so much. I really learned a lot. I appreciate it. And I'll just leave that pull up for for everybody.
If you do have a need for right now. Well, good. If you don't mind, Tracy, you can wrap this up and we'll we'll call it a day. We did pretty good on time. Yeah. Great job and great discussion. Thank you both very much And thank everyone who joined us today. I hope you got a lot of discussion. Please do submit information into the poll that'll help us understand what we should present on our next webinar.
So terrific information that you can provide for us for any questions that we didn't get to. We will definitely answer those through email. You will get a recording of this presentation in an email within 24 hours of this presentation. Thank you so much again for joining us and we hope that you'll join us again next time. Have a great day.
